Oculus VR
Purchased by Facebook in 2014. First known for the ‘Oculus Rift’ HMD.
SUMMARY:
Facebook Technologies, LLC, doing business as Oculus, is an American technology company founded by Palmer Luckey, Brendan Iribe, Michael Antonov and Nate Mitchell in July 2012 in Irvine, California, now based in Menlo Park. It specializes in virtual reality hardware and software products.
In April 2012, Luckey announced the Rift, a virtual reality headset designed for video gaming, and launched a Kickstarter campaign in August to make virtual reality headsets available to developers. The campaign proved successful and raised $2.4 million, ten times the original goal of $250,000. Two pre-production models were released to developers; the Oculus VR DK1 (Development Kit 1) and Oculus VR DK2 (Development Kit 2). The consumer product was released on March 28, 2016 with an all-new design incorporating specialized VR displays, positional audio, and infrared tracking system.
In March 2014, Facebook, Inc. CEO Mark Zuckerberg agreed to acquire Oculus for US$2.3 billion in cash and stock. In 2015, Oculus acquired Surreal Vision, a British startup focused on 3D reconstruction and mixed reality, stating that it could be possible for Oculus to develop products with the concept of telepresence.
The company partnered with Samsung to develop the Samsung Gear VR in November 2015 for the Samsung Galaxy smartphones. Zuckerberg would like to have 1 billion virtual reality headsets in consumers' hands. In June 2019 Oculus announced it sold $5 million worth of content for the Oculus Quest in just 2 weeks
Facebook is considered one of the Big Four Five companies, along with Amazon, Google, Facebook (Oculus), and Microsoft.
PRODUCTS / PROJECTS / PATENTS:
Samsung Gear VR (Hardware - HMD) <discontinued>
Oculus Rift DK1 (Hardware - HMD) <discontinued>
Oculus Rift DK2 (Hardware - HMD) <discontinued>
Oculus Rift CV1 (Hardware - HMD) <discontinued>
Oculus Go (Hardware - HMD) <current>
Oculus Touch (Hardware - Controllers) <current>
Oculus Medium (Software - Experience) <current>
Oculus Home (Software - Platform) <current>
